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So the Tank system isn't broken? A case study Tiger vs T34/76

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Reddog

Reddog

Grizzled Veteran
Dec 7, 2005
2,564
476
Australia
#1
Ok, since the SDK has been released ViViD, a fellow clan mate of mine has created a modified version of Arad featuring T34/76's and T60's against the Germans regular Tiger's, Panther's and PIV's. Going by historical data the T34/76 should not be able to penetrate the Tiger frontally at any range, in RO however this is just not true.

First up we tested the T60 vs the Tiger and as expected the T60 could not do any kind of damage to the Tiger at all, short of damaging the tracks. Next up it was on to testing out the T34/76.

Here is a picture of me about to embark in my tank, as you can see it is clearly a T34/76.
T34/76

Once in our tanks we both headed to the North Field and set ourselves up facing each other at a range of approximately 600m, illustrated below.
Facing off

I fired my first shot and to my suprise was rewarded straight away with a penetration and a little smoke, I reloaded and once again fired getting a second penetration, producing thick black smoke from the Tiger.
Heavily smoking Tiger

I promptly reloaded my cannon and fired a third time at the Tiger, this was the coup de grace as I got a third penetration and brewed up the Tiger nicely.
Tiger in flames

Just for prosperity I jumped out of my little beast and took a photo of my T34/76, standing victorious on the field of battle.
Victory!!!

So there you have it, a T34/76 defeating the frontal armour of a Tiger at 600m and destroying it with three shots. RO is a brilliant game and I think the infantry aspect of it is outstanding. But it is clearly evident to me that the vehicle system is severely broken.

I'm confident it will be fixed though ;)
 
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#4
Well i love driving the Tiger, as long as i don't encounter a Hill, darn that thing needs more HP ! Someone pimp my Tiger ?

Though i find the Tiger to be a good Tank as is, and it will only be a bit improved by the Fixes but even now its better than the Panther in some situations. BUT it takes some practice to make the Tiger growl :)
 
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#5
Witzig said:
Well i love driving the Tiger, as long as i don't encounter a Hill, darn that thing needs more HP ! Someone pimp my Tiger ?

Though i find the Tiger to be a good Tank as is, and it will only be a bit improved by the Fixes but even now its better than the Panther in some situations. BUT it takes some practice to make the Tiger growl :)
Click to expand...

The Tigers engine was always in a losing battle against the huge mass it had to haul around.

Until the patch comes out and fixes the Tiger, I will always choose the Panther over it. The better speed (including turret traverse). And it's main gun seems to be just as effective. Plus, the sloping armour gives solid protection too.
 
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#6
Johnny555 said:
The Tigers engine was always in a losing battle against the huge mass it had to haul around.

Until the patch comes out and fixes the Tiger, I will always choose the Panther over the Tiger. It is faster (including turret speed) and it's main gun seems to be just as effective. And the sloping armour gives solid protection too.
Click to expand...

Well i know that the engine sucks (historical) not that i like it *g*, actually the Panther Main Gun is a bit more powerful, but the Tiger is a lot better to snipe enemy Infantry on 400+m :) at least G
 
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#7
The Panther was always a better tank than the Tiger, whether the Tiger needs to be fixed or not. The main gun had better penetration, the frontal armor wasn't as thick, but being that it was sloped, it became as equal to or better than the Tiger's. I believe the turret armor was thicker than the Tiger's. Of course, the Panther wins on speed, reload, turret traverse...The Tiger really only wins out over the Panther on side or rear armor.

So, unless you plan on exposing your rear or sides to the enemy, the Panther is always a better choice than the Tiger....if you choose your ride by quality.

Nice test done there. Assuming you didn't hit a vision slit on the front of the Tiger...

I did read a post somewhere that a developer was stating they were reexamining the penetration....

As long as it is accurate, I will be happy.
 
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#8
You forgot the best thing about the Panther (if you ask a dedicated Panzerfahrer, not that you asked... but) is the turnable Driver's Periscope (sp?). But the Tiger has the looks !

Though if both are avaible i'll take the Panther anyday, but the Tiger ain't that bad.

And yes Ramm stated (in this Thread or another) that the Bug is being worked on and will be in the next Pacth. I guess they'll want to make sure that nothing else turns loose with the Fix.
 
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#9
True ballistics tests on armor and armor penetration in real life relied on statistical data. That is, multiple shots fired at the same armor thickness from the same range. That's because with the multiple variables acting on both armor and the shell its hard to spot trends and obtain reliable consistent results from one shot.

I'm not saying I don't believe you, obviously your one shot test proved the T34/76 could penetrate the Tiger. I'm saying that in a military approved study, they'd dismiss your findings because you only base it on one shot.

That's like taking Sgt. Biffs lucky shot with a Sherman against a Tiger at 700 yards and generalizing it to say "Okay boys, Shermans are effective against Tigers up to 700 yards. Go get 'em!"

Perhaps you could go back to your study and do a test of say, 10 trials of T34/76 vs. Tiger and compare how many shots per trial it took to kill th e Tiger? And then we can also see if it consistently takes 3 shots or if its somewhat variable.
 
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#10
Witzig said:
You forgot the best thing about the Panther (if you ask a dedicated Panzerfahrer, not that you asked... but) is the turnable Driver's Periscope (sp?). But the Tiger has the looks !
Click to expand...

Looks? Its a box with a gun sticking out! :p

http://www.redorchestragame.com/forum/member.php?u=4270: there IS a bug with the tank system, this just confirms it. It wasn't a lucky hit- the Tiger was damaged prior to the final shot being fired, so the previous hits did do damage.
 
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#12
Phoenix-D said:
raydude: there IS a bug with the tank system, this just confirms it. It wasn't a lucky hit- the Tiger was damaged prior to the final shot being fired, so the previous hits did do damage.
Click to expand...

I didn't say it was a lucky hit. I was saying that more tests are needed, regardless of whether it was lucky or not. For example:

People claimed that it ALWAYS takes 2 shots to kill a tank - regardless of range or aspect angle. Well, from the test here that claim is obviously false. But what if it always takes THREE shots to kill a tank? That's something that can be easily done with multiple trials of this same scenario.

Why should we even care, you ask? ANY information which can be reproducible over REPEATED tests is helpful to track down the tank bug. Otherwise it will take that much longer for the devs to first "find the bug" and then "fix the bug".
 
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#13
The material I presented above wasn't the limit of our testing. We played around from different ranges for a while and found that unless the Tiger was angled you could get a penetration on it anywhere, at any range, with the 76.2mm cannon of the in game T34/76. I knocked out that Tiger repeatedly, and did not get one single ricochet on it so long as it was not angled.

Anyone who knows anything about WW2 tank combat will tell you that this is just impossible, the T34/76's gun could not penetrate the Tiger frontally at any range, let alone 600 meters.

The test was not about how many shots it takes to knock out a Tiger, it was to illustrate that in game with the T34/76 you can penetrate the Tiger frontally, which is a mammoth departure from reality.
 
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#14
At Raydude:

Well with all do respect how many repeated tests do you need? It is woefully obvious the tank penetration system is broken, as most of the player base (except for the fanatics :rolleyes:) have been saying for a month now.


There is no way a 76.2mm L/42 (that is the L/42 right?) is going to penetrate over 100mm of armor at c. 600m. Even if the guys doing this test were off and the range was c. 450m, it still wouldn't happen.

Combat Mission simulates the real world results nicely. In that game, to penetrate the Tiger with the T-34/76, you have to get a shot in the lower side-hull armor, which is only 62mm if I remember correctly at 0 degrees. So, a T-34 maneuvered on the flanks at around 500m can then kill a Tiger, but from the front no way, and even the rear is doubtfull. This corresponds to the historical performance:

-At Prokorohvka during the Kursk battles, there is the famous charge of the Russian armor from behind a slope right into the midst of the German formations. A lot of Russian tanks got knocked out in their dash, but they used their speed, the dust, and the sunlight (which was behind them) to get within close range and fire at the flanks of the German tanks. They knocked out many, including Tigers, but it was only at these very close ranges on the flanks.-


Also, we shouldn't have to do test after test to confirm something the devs should've known. I keep asking this: "What good are beta testers if they miss the major game-breaking bugs?" Remember the devs don't need an SDK or anything, at any time they could have loaded a test map up with the T-34 and Tiger and seen what was shown here, along with the invincible BA-64, unstoppable SU-76, and the devastating T-60.
 
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#15
Tak said:
Ja. They know it is a problem, though, and they're fixing it.


Apparently, one change at the end of beta caused the current almost-silly conditions that we're seeing now. Should be fixed soon though, since the devs are on it and they have plenty of play data now :)
​
Click to expand...


Interestingly though, the quote from Ramm actually says they are aware of a bug with "component" damage not working correctly, e.g. engine hits, ammo hits.

He doesn't say anything about the entire penetration modeling being faulty. So, I hope this isn't indicative of further denial or some weird problem.
 
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#17
It sure looks like you can get a lot of milage out of what people think a dev said. What I understood is the penetration is fine its the internal damage model that got screwed up. What I understood is that there should be more one shot kills once a shell penetrates and they are not, so that is the bug that is being fixed.

So according to this test a T34/76 at a range of what we believe is 400-500 meters appears to be getting a penetrating shot every time. Where as it has been a common belief that this tank had to be less then 100 meters before it could penetrate the frontal armor of a Tiger. So I'm not sure we will be happy with this fix.
 
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#18
Theodrake said:
It sure looks like you can get a lot of milage out of what people think a dev said....
Click to expand...

[RO]Ramm-Jaeger said:
Actually the problem is that fixing a different bug with tank shells late in the development actually broke something in the penetration system and noone caught it. I guess we just all thought our aim started sucking and we couldn't hit the internal componts of the tanks any more :)
Click to expand...

[RO]Ramm-Jaeger said:
No tank shell should ever richochet off of a BA, there isn't even deflection code for the BA, as its armor is too weak to deflect tank shells. With that said, we've recently discovered some bugs with the tank shell/AT Rifle/Panzerfaust projectile penetration system. Essentially it seems that the internal component damage part of the system isn't working properly due to a bug. We'll definitely have this fixed in the next patch.
Click to expand...

So basically we know that there is one (or several small ones, but not that it matters) Bugs in the projectile Penetration System. We don't know what but we know the results :). And that it will be fixed, but we don't know if this involves the T34/76 vs. Tiger thing.
 
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